


(10) Pieces of Torchwood Headcanon

by spiderweb_wine



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Gen, Personal Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-08
Updated: 2012-07-08
Packaged: 2017-11-09 10:49:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/454615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiderweb_wine/pseuds/spiderweb_wine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This ended up being fourteen pieces.  Oops?</p>
            </blockquote>





	(10) Pieces of Torchwood Headcanon

**Author's Note:**

> Mostly written on tiny scraps of paper while at work.

1\. Jack carries retcon on his person at all times. Two doses’ worth, high grade, in a tiny compartment carved into the leather of his wristcomp strap. When he turns his wrist he can feel the tablets there under the leather. It’s a reminder, and a comfort, and a precaution.

 

2\. Ianto has met the Doctor. Or rather, the Doctor has met Ianto. Before Jack had left them to run off after him with no warning at all. Way before that. When Ianto had seen the blue box materialize into an out-of-the-way South London park, he knew right away what – who – it was. When the Doctor stepped out, dark leather nothing compared to the dark grief on his face, Ianto had kept his hands well away from his gun.

So the Doctor knew what Torchwood was long before he walked into it.

 

3\. After the battle of Canary Wharf, after Director Yvonne Hartman stops breathing down his neck, Jack does things the way he wants to instead of the way London wanted him to. He has, after all, had plenty of time to think about how he would prefer things done. So after Hartman is dead, he lets Toshiko see her mother. He can make people disappear, he can change people’s memories. He can live forever. It is no great stretch to arrange contact between two people who have been forbidden to see each other ever again.

The smile on Tosh’s face makes it worth all the bother, the retcon, and the misdirection of officials. So worth it.

 

4\. Yes, Ianto really does know everything. He knows every code for all of their computers. He knows every scrap of paper in the archives. He knew about Jack’s immortality long before Owen shot him point-blank.

 

5\. Owen doesn’t regret getting shot. He’s dead, and it hurts like Hell every second of every day, knowing that. But, wanker as he may have been in life, as he still is in death (truth be told), he could never make Martha Jones feel guilty that she wasn’t the one to get shot, instead. So no, he can’t regret it.

Not out loud.

 

6\. Suzie only went crazy after Hartman was dead. With the big boss no longer watching, Jack’s directional mandates weren't enough. When you’re shagging the boss, you don’t have to listen to what he says.

 

7\. That last bit doesn’t apply to Ianto. Ianto of course still listens. As much as he ever did, anyway.

 

8\. Tosh’s favourite entrance is by invisible lift. She likes seeing the whole height of the Hub, and knowing the sky is up there just beyond the roof of stone. It’s reassuring. She doesn’t use the lift very often, to keep the feeling fresh.

 

9\. Andy would like Gwen a lot more if she weren’t quite so open-book. The fact that she still manages to pull shit over on him is just embarrassing.

 

10\. Jack doesn’t like being the boss. In 1999, out of necessity after Alex gave him the terrible gift of leadership, he went through all the protocols and ruthlessly stripped the paperwork down to its bare minimum. He did it again after Torchwood London fell. It’s still not enough. And paperwork is the tip of the iceberg. The burden of making the right decision, every time, in conditions of stress and death and mayhem, for years on end - - that’s the part he’d like to give away. He’d have to give it to someone qualified, though, and there’s the rub. Gwen’s too human, too soft. Ianto could do it, could sift through those decisions with his cold, rational mind, but it would kill him in the end and Jack doesn’t want to see those fine shoulders bowed by the weight of Torchwood Three. So he holds on, and makes the best decisions possible, every time, because he’s the one who’ll have to live with them. Forever.

 

11\. What Owen misses most, being dead, isn’t drinking, or sex, or take-out from the Thai place down the street, or even sleep. It’s sensation. Touch. He remembers the experiments done in the 1950, where people placed in sensory deprivation chambers panicked and had to be let out after less than an hour. Occasionally, someone went mad. Remembering doesn’t help.

 

12\. Jack thinks Myfanwy is happiest on the occasions when he lets her fly free at night. He stands on the great bronze curve of the roof and she always comes back in the cold hour before dawn. But he’s wrong. She wasn’t young when she fell through the Rift, and she’s been with Torchwood a long time, and the sky feels too big to her now.

 

13\. Tosh has been working on her computers at such a high level and for so long that some of them are edging towards sentience. (She and Tony Stark would get along like a house on fire, once he’s stopped flirting long enough to talk shop.) One of them didn’t erase her final message, despite Jack’s shift delete keystrokes. Now that message is hidden so deep in the system that no human other than Tosh will ever find it.

 

14\. When Owen was 11, his older brother killed himself. He was manic-depressive, and with their mother’s illness dragging on - - well. Three stories wasn’t a long fall, but enough to kill someone determined.


End file.
